We each have a right to what we have worked to produce and to what others have willingly given us. No one has a right to take it away.

Is that simple enough for you?

I don't know why, but this is the funniest thing I have read this week.

You, sir, deserve the mod points I foolishly spent elsewhere this morning.

Everyone has a right to have and keep these things. They have a right to be allowed to pursue them. They don't have a right to demand them from others. The problem I have is this notion that a right to something confers responsibility on others to provide it.

You do NOT have a right to demand that I feed you.

I can make a crude knife by sharpening a stick or banging two rocks together in a certain way. But that's not the point.

I didn't make the clothes on my back, but I did trade something I produced for them (well, I traded my productivity for money, which I then traded for the clothes). It doesn't matter how I got them...now that I have them, they belong to me and I have a right to them and for them to be taken from me would require action by another person.

There's an important distinction here: It's the right to KEEP AND BEAR arms, not the right to HAVE arms. It doesn't require that you be given them, just that you not be prevented from having them.

You don't have a right to a trial at all. Trials exist because we have laws that go beyond rights. We might be able to say there's a right to "fairness" or "justice" but those are harder to define.

And no, I don't have a right to be free from discrimination. But I'd just as soon not do business with someone who wants to discriminate against me. Legal protection from discrimination is nice, but it's not a right.

You don't have a right to food. You have a right to produce food and no one has a right to take it away from you. If I have more food than I need, no one has the right to take it from me just because they don't have enough. You don't "have a right to a share" of things other people work hard to produce. If you want a share, earn it.

Notice that I'm talking about RIGHTS. Not about the way our government works or the way people act and think today. I'm talking about natural rights.

A trial at all requires those services. The judge is there whether it is fair or not.

Clearly defining what is and is not a right is hardly trolling. Don't call someone a troll just because you don't like what they have to say.

Agreed. I'm of the mind that a right is something which requires action to deny, but exists without any intervention by others. The right to free speech, for example, exists naturally: you can say whatever you want until someone comes along and coerces you to stop.

This of course means that health care, education, and web access are NOT rights, because they require other people (doctors, teachers, ISPs) to provide services before such a "right" is accessible. I don't see how anything can be a right when the willful participation of others is a requirement.

Is the point of it to put it in front of as many faces as possible, or to put it somewhere it will actually contribute to space education?

Johnson Space Center has been instrumental in the education of a LOT of young people. I spent time there several times as a student (I grew up 3 hours from it). I would say that making the shuttle part of an education program instead of a mere tourist attraction would be more fitting to NASA's goals.

But hey, it's all about impressing the visitors, right?

As someone who grew up in the Texas school system, I'm happy to report you're woefully misinformed.

I live on the border of Texas and Louisiana. Kennedy is a 16+ hour drive for me, and the closest of the four locations.

Johnson and Kennedy should have been obvious to anyone. The Smithsonian as well. And LA just makes sense if you want to put one out west. Yay for politics!

Actually, my work experience DID teach me the OSI model. Back when I was getting on-the-job training on networking, a network admin whose degree was in geography (he had no IT education in college, and only got any degree because it was required for promotion) made it a point to teach me the OSI model because its concepts are necessary learning if you're going to do much with managed switches.

Yes, there are a lot of people in IT who cut corners and use dirty fixes to make things work quickly. It's been my experience that those people are just as likely as not to be college graduates. Look at the number of college students who consider cheating to be an acceptable method of passing. They cut corners all the time.

I've seen too many incompetent college graduates to let a degree sway my perception of someone. I assume everyone is an idiot until they prove otherwise :)

Theory and framework aren't exclusive to university. In fact, especially as IT goes, they are informed primarily by those in the working world. I've fired college graduates because they couldn't deliver, the same as that those who scraped a CCNA.

I know this, but how does one type that accent without the letter? (hint: I don't see anything between your first set of parentheses).

Also, my joke seems to have fallen flat.